Langston back in coaching at Lamar

Chuck Langston’s past is at war with his present.
Langston knows what a Google search of his name results in. It takes him back to 2007, NCAA violations at Central Oklahoma, losing his job as head coach and a two-year ban from college coaching.
He asks his wife, Amy, when it is going to end.
“I didn’t want to come in here today, I knew what it was going to be about,” Langston said, sitting in the Dauphin Athletic Complex Friday for Lamar Media Day. “It’s over with. It’s like how many interviews am I going to have to do where I talk about the past? But that is a part of me and who I am.”
If you conduct a Google search of “Chuck Langston” today, the top result isn’t a part of his past. Instead, it’s his profile page as Lamar’s new offensive line coach, the first college coaching position he said he has had in four seasons.
“I’ve been knocked down in the profession and what I was taught is when that happens, you get back up,” Langston said.
The 1991 West Brook graduate coached at Central Oklahoma for five years before the NCAA found Langston and his staff guilty of a lack of institutional control. A bevy of violations including medical treatments, the use of facilities, as well as free housing, meals and transportation were presented.
“I always say a head coach gets too much credit when things go well and too much blame when things don’t,” Lamar coach Ray Woodard said. “A lot of things that happened really weren’t his fault, but ultimately head coaches are responsible for everything.”
Fired from Central Oklahoma and banned from college coaching, Langston started anew.
“You grow a lot more in adversity than you do in comfort time,” Langston said. “My faith grew. My relationship with my wife and my kids grew…My parents taught me you fess up to your mistakes, be a man about it and that’s what I tried to do. Whatever rules we broke, we broke.”
After climbing up the coaching ladder for years, he landed at Groveton High School (a 2A school with a 2012 enrollment of 204) as the special teams coordinator. After a year at Groveton, Langston became head coach and athletic director at Trinity High School in Euless.
He was back to coaching kids, but it wasn’t the same as college. He had to mow the fields, go to all the schools events and field call from angry parents.
“A lot of it is the same because you’re influencing kids, but you enjoy college a lot more because it’s pure football,” said Langston, who played at and graduated from Oklahoma.
After three years at Trinity, Langston returned to Beaumont as director of football operations for Lamar last year. Beneath the paperwork, trip-planning and other duties that came with his new role, was a foot in the door to a potential college coaching job.
Earlier this year, the opportunity he had been looking for arrived.
“It happened sooner than I thought it would,” Langston said of getting back to college coaching. “I was content being the ops guy and was doing a good job. But coach (Dennis) McKnight abruptly wanted to get out of the profession and (offensive coordinator Larryy Kuek) and coach Woodard talked about it and wanted to make me the o-line guy. I was elated. It was a great feeling, like I arrived again.”
Woodard said the hire was a “no-brainer” and didn’t look at anybody besides Langston, a former offensive lineman, to fill the opening.
Now, Langston is charged with leading an experienced offensive line that could be an integral part of the team’s success this season. He’s trying to find balance between coaching and spending time with his three sons, but says they’re happy to just be settled in one city.
Somehow, Langston knows this was all part of some plan for him. He’s learning to cope with his past and not let it get in the way of a better future.
“A guy once told me,” he said. “Your windshield is a lot bigger than your rear-view mirror.”